Today I could write about the two men playing fantasy prime minister and splashing money around like there is no tomorrow, like children in a sweet shop. If this Tory leadership contest goes on for much longer, it will bankrupt the country.
Instead, I want to take my text from a real prime minister, and a more astute and intelligent one, Harold Wilson. In November 1967, after what for him was a humiliating sterling devaluation from $2.80 to $2.40 (nearly twice what it is now), he tried to reassure people in a television broadcast, saying that “the pound in your pocket” had not been devalued.
It was a sleight of hand. Devaluation meant that sterling bought fewer imported goods than before, as we have seen